Sons of Loki

A sweet man just came by from Tokyo Electric for me to pay my bill (only 1,200 yen, which is nice). Packing went a lot easier when I saw that I can take my mandolin as carry-on luggage. I’ve thrown loads of stuff out, though it still seems to be all here. I’m moving out.

I’d be lying if I said I felt desperately sad. It bothers me that I’m not bothered by leaving, because the truth is that after about three days back at home the truth is going to sink in and I will be a miserable wreck. I’m just looking forward to the confusing and complex task of “leaving Japan” being over, from a practical standpoint. It’s really complicated! There are forms! Stuff to return! I have to take photos and say goodbye to people! I haven’t had a second of downtime (except when I got stuck on Awkward Family Photos) and writing long blog posts or uploading photos seems out of the question.

But I couldn’t go without putting a little thing up. It seems weird that I will never, ever see this room again. It’s been my home for ten months. Not much of any interest happened here, but I’ll miss the nasty yellow curtains, the odd humidity of the toilet room, the lovely green forest of moss and little plants that has grown in the run-off from the air-con and over my discarded sock.

I plan to make the last song I play in my room “Black Out Fall Out” (the later compilation album edition which is a magnitude more epic). I remember when Polysics ended their live show with it. It was beautiful.

Technically, I leave Tokyo today (Narita is in Chiba-ken). This is sad. If there’s one thing I’ve confirmed from this year, it’s that this city…

this city is the best in the world.

I’ve decided I’ll have plenty of time to blog when I get home, and I have plenty of stuff to be getting on with right now, so I’m gonna hold off on reporting on Hakone, Kamakura, and Kansai (blimey, we have been around) until I get home.

Home. Christ. Today, tomorrow, Sunday, and then home.

I don’t want to leave, but I do want this long, drawn-out procedure of leaving to be done with.

So the student admin office called. They say I haven’t been paying rent for the past four months and have decided to wait until I have four days left in the country and a shitload of things to do and a mountain of fees and bills to pay to tell me that I owe them 60,000 yen or so. And they give me a day’s notice.

So I guess I might squeeze in a blog post over the weekend. You know, I want to enjoy my last few days here, but more than anything I want to chillax for a bit.

but it’s non-stop until Tuesday evening.

The Wire. Hell, what can I say about The Wire which hasn’t already been said a thousand times on a thousand blogs? It was always one of those series which I meant to watch until I actually got around to watching it… and that was it, had no choice but to burn through the first series in a week. It’s worse than crack, but it’s undoubtedly the best television series ever made. No question.

So apart from spending my last few days in Japan (Day 294/307 – 12 days left) watching a series I can watch anywhere, what have I been up to since climbing that monster-ass Fuji?

The day after we got back, I said goodbye to my dear friend and renowned jazz trumpeter Miles Davies, who is even as I write far away in gloomy Brum serving up creamy desserts to Cadbury’s World patrons, or whatever it is he does.

Then I’m not sure what I did next. Like McNulty and co., I am reduced to sifting through photographs, old text messages, and Facebook updates to try to undercover the story of what happened.

The Sunday after, we visited Harajuku … or we tried to. Yeah, been here ten months, and I still forget that Harajuku is north of Shibuya up Meiji-dori, not south. So we walked for a long time, wound up in Ebisu tired and confused, and eventually just got the Yamanote Line to Harajuku, which we should have done in the first place. We found a cool little shop called Chicago that sells all kinds of second-hand clothing, including cheap kimonos. I agonised for about ten seconds before setting 7,000 yen down on a supremely manly brown silk kimono, juban (undershirt), obi (belt) and happi (overcoat used for festivals). Now I have one, I obviously need to hit a few summer matsuri to show the thing off. I’m hoping the Sumidagawa Fireworks Festival – on the very final Saturday before we fly out on Monday – will be a beautiful experience.

On Wednesday, I packed Jade off to a wicked little guesthouse/hotel in Koenji- dirt cheap and got everything you need. There’s even a Tesco’s nearby, which proves that Tesco have got stores everywhere. (Seriously, never seen one in Japan before.)

We had a wander around the cosy little district around there, which is a world away from the dispassionate bulk of Shinjuku or the straight-laced streets of Fuchu. Koenji is sort of old and dirty, but vibrant and beautiful at the same time. We headed a little way down the line to find the Asagaya Art College.

We also did some good planning for the final few weeks here. It will be hard to cram everything in, but I want to try. I’m going to attempt a jaunt to Osaka/Kyoto in the final week via night bus and capsule hotel, which should be a lark.

I had a big old clear out in preparation for leaving, dumping all these old receipts and worksheets I had no use for. Felt good.

Friday I met Rob, Hime, and Rob’s デカイ Russian friend Alex for lunch at this funky Russian restaurant in Kichijoji. Funnily enough, it’s the second Russian restaurant I’ve been to, but the first time I’ve had Russian cuisine.

Ah, it was so good. Beetroot soup, sweet and warming; a Cornish pasty-like side, and a kind of salmon omelette. Really tasty. After that, karaoke with a few more friends, and finally pizza at Shakey’s, a few beers, and MANLY CONVERSATION.

Saturday we’d planned to visit the Oedo Onsen Monogatari, but lack of persons postponed that to Sunday. Instead, Jade and I visited Tokyo Dome City to try and find where these cosplayers be at. Unfortunately, garishly-dressed fans were nowhere to be seen. Instead, the place was packed with air-headed KAT-TUN fans, killing time until his (edit: oh wait its a band lol) big concert at the Dome that night, taking photos and waving fans (the kind you cool yourself down with, not people) with pictures of them pretty-boys on them. I felt sorry for the handful of boyfriends dragged along.

It was kinda cool to be back in that area. My first destination in Tokyo way back in 2007 was Jimbocho – I have a strong memory of going for a walk on my first night and ending up at the Dome late at night, playing Taiko no Tatsujin alone. So long ago. Plus, I got to see the big LaQua roller coaster I rode all that time ago, in my last week in Tokyo.

Almost bought a Hanshin Tigers jersey at the baseball store. (I have a secret love for the Tigers because they never, ever win. Funnily enough, a few days later I sat next to a Tigers fan decked out in every bit of merchandise imaginable on the Metro.)


Later we met up with our old friend Yudai for a few drinks in an izakaya – Jade’s introduction to these wonderful little places. After Rob and I had downed a few massive pitchers of beer, we met up with Risako and hit a brand-new Karaoke-Kan for a few songs. They had a great selection of songs, including – a first! – Pizzicato Five’s Twiggy-Twiggy, my first introduction to j-pop years and years ago. Shame we only had an hour there.

On Sunday, we took the train out to Odaiba over the Rainbow Bridge (again!) to visit the old Oedo Onsen, a kind of theme-park-hot-baths complex near the Telecom Center. We met up with Yudai and Kaz, ate some chicken at the Miraikan Lotteria, then met Risako and Rob to hit the onsen.
We went before in October, so it’s nice to bookend our trip there. Hit the hot baths – hit the sauna – hit the cold, cold bath. Ate ramen. I got ice cream. It’s a really nice place, and if you go after 6pm, it’s only 1,600 yen. Plus you get a faux-Edo period street full of people clattering about in yukata, which is cheesy fun.

Odaiba’s further than I thought. I’d missed the last train on the Seibu Line, so Jade and I walked from Higashi-Koganei, through the empty streets of Koganei back to Tama station. (Can you imagine walking through the dark streets of a British city at 1am and not running into something? Eh, maybe I’m just paranoid.) It was strangely beautiful, getting somewhat lost and then running across the enormous metal pylons of the Seibu Tamagawa Line, like disturbing Cold War brainwashing antennas in the middle of a entirely dead suburb of Tokyo.

Can you tell I am beginning to tire of this blog post? I need another fix of the Wire, but I don’t want to start the season 2 shit straight off … gotta space that shit out, bro.

Yesterday was Umi no Hi (Sea Day), another wonderful public holiday in Japan where everyone goes to the beach. Or goes to Harajuku to hit the sales (I roughly estimate a third of pedestrians were carrying a bag from Laforet – no lie).

It was a beautifully clear day, and we wanted to hit a few of the art galleries around the Omotesando area.

Sadly, one was closed for the holiday, and another was 1,000 yen for entry, so we saved our money and went to see exhibition of Hokusai’s famous Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei (富嶽三十六景)) at the Oota woodcut gallery. Hard to believe a gallery of such classically Japanese art is squirreled away behind a Softbank in ultra-hip Harajuku, but there’s that mix of ancient-and-modern that lazy travel journalists like to claim Japan is uniquely comprised of every single time they do a piece on Japan. (Unique my ass. Go to any British city and see a branch of Tescos next to a centuries-old cathedral, or a similar thing in any country in the world.)

Anyway, as a guy who owns a (very beat-up) jumbo A1-size poster of the famous Great Wave of Kanagawa, it was strange to see the real thing – a tiny square of thin paper with that incredible curve, the sprawling tentacles of foam, the crescent of the fishermen’s boat.

Ah, but is it the “real thing” at all? It’s a woodblock print, and thousands were made. There’s probably some point in there about what constitutes art, but it’s getting late and I think the point here is obvious.

As always, there’s the one everybody thinks of, but some of the less seen prints are more splendid. The thing about the woodblock printing technique is that the paper becomes 3D – gradients are infinitely smooth, characters pop out, fabrics are decorated with actually embossed patterns. They’re nothing short of breathtaking.

It occurred to me a nice little place I could show Jade – the Harajuku Chamamo Cat Cafe – so we went up to the little room on the fifth floor I visited some months ago and bothered the cats for an hour. It’s so relaxing, just watching them curled up. I had a chat with the owner in pretty decent Japanese, which was fun.

A long walk getting lost in Yoyogi Park in the still-hot twilight led me to feeling a tad heat-struck. I was feeling dog-tired by the time I stumbled back to my room, and I still don’t feel great.

It’s got to the point where I really don’t have any time left to do anything. I want to hit a festival this weekend (after we visit Hakone), and go to the beach, and see Osaka, and say goodbye to people, and pack, and finish this translation I’m doing, and post things home, and I’m still not sure if I can do it all in a measly twelve days. But … I guess I must persevere.

So, until next time, here’s what we all came to see: beautiful puddycats.

Mount Fuji (富士山) is a 3,776m stratovolcano, the highest point in Japan. On Thursday, we climbed it.
Download my Fuji .kmz for Google Earth

Jade and I awoke at 3:45am, after hardly any sleep, and cycled to Rob’s house bright and early to meet him and Kanako. Jade had borrowed Ella’s bike, and halfway there I was struck by the terrifying thought of being stopped by a cop and having to explain ourselves and missing the train and not getting to climb Fuji and everything going horribly wrong. Luckily, it didn’t happen. One of the TUFS security guards greeted us with a “good morning! It’s pretty early.”
“Yup,” I said. “We’re climbing Fuji today.”
“Ah. Take care.”


At Musashi-Koganei station, we met Tatsuya on a Takao-bound Chuo-line train. At Tachikawa we met Rei and Risako, and the Fellowship was duly assembled.

As the almost-empty train sped through the countryside to Otsuki, beautiful sunlight streamed through the windows. At Otsuki we changed to the Fujikyu express line, which was charmingly old-fashioned: you had to buy a ticket from an actual conductor on board the train! No IC cards out here.

Everyone else slept, but I found I couldn’t. The train drifted higher, until the land hit the sky and clouds started to stream around the mountains. I felt the anticipation when I spotted the summit of Fuji appear from a veil of clouds.

At Kawaguchiko, we changed to a bus headed for Kawaguchiko 5th Station, the trailhead for the Yoshida Trail and the beginning of our ascent…
Read more…

It’s been a busy few weeks.

Before I write about the epic struggle of climbing Mt Fuji, I feel like I need to keep up with the stuff I’ve been doing in the last month. This will mostly be an dispassionate list of events, but the Fuji post will hopefully be a doozy.

So … On Tuesday 29th, back in June, I went to Sweets Paradise – a Japan staple, an all-you-can-eat cake bar. I mean, loads of cake. And ice cream. As if filling up on cake wasn’t bad enough, the following day we – Hime, Katy, Fran, Ella, Miles and I – went to Yokohama to visit Chinatown.

Yokohama is part of the enormous Chiba-Tokyo-Yokohama-Kawasaki conurbation, about 30 minutes south of Shinjuku by the Shonan-Shinjuku Line, and it’s quite famous for its Chinatown. It was a pretty surreal experience – it felt like London’s Chinatown, so in the end the overall feeling was something like having left Japan to visit London to visit Soho to visit Chinatown. Except, it was … a more real Chinatown?

We ate Chinese food – of course, there they just call it food – and it was pretty tasty, but … In all honestly, I’m not a huge fan of Chinese Chinese food. The tastes are a little too weird. I much prefer British Chinese food, as MSG- and fat-laden as it is. Still, the spring rolls and chicken soup was delish.

Then we took a walk down to the harbour, which was beautiful.

And then finally, a cup of “Relax Blend” tea in a charming little cafe. One of those tea/coffee houses that Japan does so well.

The day after that, I went on a ROAD TRIP. Rob’s been teaching English to this cool old dude called Abeshima-san, and he took us (Rob, Kanako and me) off to Fuji go-ko (Fuji Five Lakes), a popular tourist area to the north of Fuji, about two hours west of Tokyo. It was, as expected, very pretty, very picturesque.

We ate zaru soba, the dish of cold noodles served on a bamboo tray with a pot of sauce. I’d never eaten it before because it looked a bit … like cold, tasteless noodles, but my word, was it tasty! You pick up the noodles and dip them in the thin sauce, and they go down a treat. Later, we tried grass mochi, which were surprisingly nice.

We went to a few tourist-trappy places, like an expensive art museum (admittedly with some beautiful kimono dyed by a man called Itchiku Kubota) and the museum of – uh – music boxes.

But the coolest bit was the Bat Cave, a small cave in the infamous forest of Aokigahara (reputedly haunted, and sadly a top spot for suicides).

I love caves, but I’ve only been to a handful – the best being the famous Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. I’d really like to get into it properly – there’s something about clambering around in the pristine atmosphere of a rocky hollow somewhere deep underground.

OH SHIT WHAT IS THAT

Finally, we skipped stones down by the smallest of the lakes (the name of which escapes me).

The day after that (told you I was busy!) Rob, Kaz and I went to a little ramen shop called Ramen Jiro in Koganei to try out what I was told was a big, big bowl of ramen. I was pretty hungry, so I thought I’d get 大 (big) size rather than 小 (small), but Kaz warned me that “small” didn’t mean “small” here.

There was a big queue for such a tiny little ramen shop, but then ramen shops are serious business in Japan. After a while, we got seats and I got my bowl of ramen.

It was … Picture a big bowl of ramen. Then add the contents of another two bowls on top, until you have a massive tower of beansprouts, cabbage, and the juiciest, most tender pork you’ve ever tasted, layered on top of noodles and broth and – oh god, it was huge. I ate, and ate, and ate, and after thirty minutes I had a bowl of ramen that was still as big as the biggest portion you’d get anywhere else. So I ate some more. And I finished it – but only just.

After that, we went to the park with some drinks to just chill out. We chatted shit. Some cops stopped us because they thought we two big gaijin were menacing poor Kaz, but then we had a nice chat and everything was alright. (Ahaha, cops are so racist.) Our friend Risako turned out, and we stayed out in the park until dawn, just chatting and drinking. (Try doing that in England without getting stabbed or mugged.)

The day after, I went to Narita to pick up Jade, my old friend from Japanese class in Norwich. It’s her second trip to Japan after a week on an exchange trip to an art university in Asagaya, and she’s hoping to pick up a few contacts here for exhibitions and such. We went for delicious okonomiyaki at this little place near Tobitakyu station (seriously, what is it with Japan and tiny little restaurants that make the best food?). Sunday, we hit up my old hometown, Uguisudani (which hadn’t changed a bit since November) and walked through Ueno and the Ameyoko street market down to Akihabara, the place I will one day die in misery.

Monday we went for all-you-can-eat curry in Shinjuku (Tokyo seems to have as many curry houses as Britain, and the standard is generally pretty high) with Rob and a few friends, then stopped for coffee in Asagaya with Kanako and Risako as the rain battered the windows. Tuesday was my friend Miles’s leaving party – all-you-can-eat pizza (my stomach groans) and then karaoke. Man, I will miss karaoke.

Then Wednesday, Jade and I went with my friend Deky to see the Pokemon Store in Hamamatsucho. It was pretty cool, though largely just a standard merchandise store. No Nurse Joys or omnipresent Chanseys, though they did have the Pokemon Centre music. On. Continuous. Loop.


Then we went to the Miraikan, the MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE! in Odaiba. They had an exhibition of Doraemon and the real-life parallels in modern science. I love that kind of stuff.

One of the coolest exhibits was an actual honest-to-god Invisibility Cloak. It only worked from exactly the right angle (behind the projector that projected an image on to a cloak covered in retro-reflective material) but man, it looked cool.

Then we tackled another marvel of modern science, the Lotteria 10-story Tower Cheese Burger (タワーチーズバーガー). I saw this on a poster and thought it was just a photoshopped joke, but then I saw it on the menu, and knew I would try it one day.

It’s kind of disappointing.

It’s just a big, salty, cheesy burger with ten layers. We split it between us, and it was alright, I guess. Only 990 yen, too.

We saw the amazing razor-sharp edge of enormous ad agency Dentsu’s HQ (a clever optical illusion – the path leading up to it is precisely the angle of the (invisible) wall around the edge) in rainy Minato-ku.

Finally, we went down to Roppongi Hills (like, my fourth time?) to go up to their observation deck. I’ve been up the Tokyo Metropolitan Towers deck so often, it was nice to see a different perspective.


Man, I cannot get over this city.

The day after, we climbed Fuji.

I cycled along Route 14 on my way back from Kichijoji. I can’t remember what I was listening to, but it seemed apt. I passed glowing family restaurants in the dark, catching a vignette of a store manager standing, alone, keeping a midnight vigil over rows of empty tables. Brief traffic flashes past. The night air whips past, cool and refreshing. This is my city.

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.

The word of the day is “crash blossom“. On Nippon Housou 1242 AM Radio, they are debating the relative merits of YouTube and Nico Nico Douga.

The day after – or was it the same day? – I’m on the 48th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Actually, the 47th floor, where the toilets are. Away from the bright lights and monochrome carpets of the observation deck on the floor above, the oddly-lengthy corridor to the toilets is plain, a shade of industrial beige, unadorned. It seems impossible that this floor was once open to the elements, as big-muscled construction workers wearing blue bandanas hoisted great steel beams into place, laid cabling, built stairs up to a floor that had yet to exist. If you were one of those workers putting this floor up, twenty years ago, two-hundred and thirty metres above the ground, would you be able to imagine how it would look full of tourists and gift shops and with a grand piano? How’d they get that up there, anyway? The whole place seems impossible, a logical contradiction.

Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own.

The next day – or it might have been today – Rob and I, sweltering from the heat, take a seat on a bench outside MUFJ in Kichijoji. We are killing time until the contact lenses we have ordered from the local opticians are ready, at 2pm. The lenses are made in Japan – it should be cheaper to bulk-buy them here and bring them back with us. I bought a collection of Otsuichi’s stories, Zoo 1, and the first The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya novel. I feel like we’re two old men, sitting on benches all day long.

Some time before, I’m at ICU for their end-of-term party thing. It’s a bright, sunny day. Someone hands out water pistols. I take a few photos, lie back on the grass, bask in the sun. It’s certainly summer.

Back in Shinjuku, we browse all seven floors of a branch of Marui, one filled with little boutiques for the stranger side of Tokyo fashion – gothic, lolita, punk, gothic lolita, steampunk, and various combinations of them all. Two middle-aged men dressed up like china dolls in pink frilly dresses and blonde curls stomp around on platform shoes. Victorian angels float through the merchandise. On the first floor, I buy a silkscreen print, which later covers my window.

Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendor of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him.

Close to midnight, I get on the wrong train and end up on the Hashimoto spur. Luckily, I can still get home before the trains stop running. I am at a station called Keio Tamagawa with about three or four other people on the platform, all of us waiting for the last train.

A lot earlier, in the book shop of the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art, I flick through glossy, enticing books on architecture. I ache with desire to become an architect and design sweeping facades of glass and pine, design for better living, live in Fallingwater and listen to jazz all day.

The simple fact is that if you are ever mentioned on page 1 of a Dan Brown novel you will be mentioned with an anarthrous occupational nominal premodifier and you will have died a painful and horrible death by page 2.

The night before ICU’s party, I’m in Koreatown with Kaz and Rob and Kanako and friends, feeling nostalgic at the PCbangs and noraebangs, mixing the egg into the bibimbap and wrapping up chunks of barbecued pork in leaves of lettuce with lashes of chilli sauce. This time a year previously, I must have been heading out to Seoul for a month. It seems like forever ago.

“”Every day I write the book”. Elvis Costello,” says the DJ on Nippon 1242.

Today, I’m back on Route 14, cycling back wearing my nice new climbing boots which I bought for scaling Mount Fuji in two weeks’ time. Everything is so perfect, so peaceful, and yet there’s an underlying current of discomfort. It can’t be summed up in words, that’s why. I’m overwhelmed by it all. The sheer beauty of nature, the overbearing unending joy of living, when everything’s going right – no one can quite write that down. It’s painful.